2015 Outlook

Forecasting Follies

Nobody’s perfect.

That universal truth is easy to prove, of course, and no sane person would deny it. Indeed, even the smartest of us are far from immune even in our areas of expertise when we’re actively trying to do our best. A famous study by the U.S. Institute of Medicine concluded that up to 100,000 people die each year due to readily preventable medical errors. Since physicians are among the smartest and most highly trained professionals imaginable, being stupid is obviously not a prerequisite for making mistakes, even horrible mistakes.

It’s also easy to prove our how error-prone we are in the investment world. Every year I take a look at various predictions for the year that’s ending and they are uniformly lousy in the aggregate. Moreover, when somebody does get one right or almost right, that performance quality is not repeated in subsequent years.